There’s never going to be a “Year of the Linux Desktop” where there’s some critical inflection point like a lot of people think. But Microsoft has fucked up here in assuming that consumer trust is a linear relationship and it’s not. They broke the trust, the cracks are there, and users will keep bleeding. They’ll keep a certain percentage of users through apathy or complacency, but the momentum is flowing in reverse now.
What it takes for any one person to cross over is going to look different, whether that’s Linux getting up to speed on a feature they were looking for or Microsoft crossing yet another unacceptable threshold, but despite all my anger and personal grievances aside, I truly believe Microsoft as a company is incapable of correcting this problem.
Their goals are entirely misaligned, they believe they can dictate the market at the consumer and their revenue is dependent on that. They’re bleeding more money and talent through this AI debacle and that’s making them even less capable of facing and addressing the issues. Unfortunately I don’t think they’ll ever fully implode, but just like Chrome eventually ate IE’s market share and now won’t go away, so it will be with Linux.
Bonus points: I’m calling it, I truly do believe that in ~5 years or so Windows will cease to be its own operating system and start shifting towards a Linux distro with a bespoke DE (again, see Chrome/Edge). They don’t want to have to keep maintaining an OS like this and one of the biggest arguments for doing so has been the backwards compatibility, but everything is cloud and SaaS now and they want to push more business customers in that direction anyway. Server will be a thorn in their side for awhile, but consumer facing Windows distro will be the perfect testing ground. Mark it, ~5 years … EEE
The fact that I switched is telling. I legit liked Windows up until 11 and only used Linux on laptops. Everything really did just work and the OS stayed out of my way, OneDrive+office for my whole family was $80/year, and every piece of software I wanted to use was built for it. I gave 11 a shot. I stuck with it a long time.
Now my desktop runs all FOSS and the only thing I miss is Excel.
Pales in comparison, unfortunately. That’s what I’m using now and it feels on par with Office 2007. If you want a specific example…data validation is a bit of a trainwreck. Unless something has changed recently, there is no way to see which cells have data validation applied
But I should note that I’m an excel “power user” and LibreOffice will fit the bill for 99.5% of people.
Depends on the manufacturer and if you purchased in store VS online. Also, every computer purchased online has the full specs and if you know what to look for you won’t be taken advantage of by the nerd that looks like they know about computers but really only talks up the most expensive one.
Yeah but the thing is, unless it has to do with governments and anti trust against corporations or national security interests there’s never going to be a major shift to Linux.
France recently changed to Linux on a majority of their government pc’s in an attempt to remove dependence on Microsoft and the US and to maintain national security.
There’s never going to be a “Year of the Linux Desktop” where there’s some critical inflection point like a lot of people think. But Microsoft has fucked up here in assuming that consumer trust is a linear relationship and it’s not. They broke the trust, the cracks are there, and users will keep bleeding. They’ll keep a certain percentage of users through apathy or complacency, but the momentum is flowing in reverse now.
What it takes for any one person to cross over is going to look different, whether that’s Linux getting up to speed on a feature they were looking for or Microsoft crossing yet another unacceptable threshold, but despite all my anger and personal grievances aside, I truly believe Microsoft as a company is incapable of correcting this problem.
Their goals are entirely misaligned, they believe they can dictate the market at the consumer and their revenue is dependent on that. They’re bleeding more money and talent through this AI debacle and that’s making them even less capable of facing and addressing the issues. Unfortunately I don’t think they’ll ever fully implode, but just like Chrome eventually ate IE’s market share and now won’t go away, so it will be with Linux.
Bonus points: I’m calling it, I truly do believe that in ~5 years or so Windows will cease to be its own operating system and start shifting towards a Linux distro with a bespoke DE (again, see Chrome/Edge). They don’t want to have to keep maintaining an OS like this and one of the biggest arguments for doing so has been the backwards compatibility, but everything is cloud and SaaS now and they want to push more business customers in that direction anyway. Server will be a thorn in their side for awhile, but consumer facing Windows distro will be the perfect testing ground. Mark it, ~5 years … EEE
The fact that I switched is telling. I legit liked Windows up until 11 and only used Linux on laptops. Everything really did just work and the OS stayed out of my way, OneDrive+office for my whole family was $80/year, and every piece of software I wanted to use was built for it. I gave 11 a shot. I stuck with it a long time.
Now my desktop runs all FOSS and the only thing I miss is Excel.
LibreOffice Calc?
Pales in comparison, unfortunately. That’s what I’m using now and it feels on par with Office 2007. If you want a specific example…data validation is a bit of a trainwreck. Unless something has changed recently, there is no way to see which cells have data validation applied
But I should note that I’m an excel “power user” and LibreOffice will fit the bill for 99.5% of people.
Consumers don’t choose OS, manufacturers do.
Depends on the manufacturer and if you purchased in store VS online. Also, every computer purchased online has the full specs and if you know what to look for you won’t be taken advantage of by the nerd that looks like they know about computers but really only talks up the most expensive one.
Yes, depends on the manufacturer
And relevant xkcd - https://xkcd.com/2501/
Yeah but the thing is, unless it has to do with governments and anti trust against corporations or national security interests there’s never going to be a major shift to Linux.
France recently changed to Linux on a majority of their government pc’s in an attempt to remove dependence on Microsoft and the US and to maintain national security.